Months ago, I abandoned this book halfway through. I was mystified at the incredible laudits it had received, the awards, the blurbs, the iconic status. I had read other Ursula Le Guin books, finding them completely awesome and wonderful, but this one, maybe her best known and most praised, I just couldn't penetrate.



I didn't like it. It was so political. So dry. With a few exceptions, where chapters would suddenly jump into the mythology of the alien planet, it was all so trudgingly expository.

On this planet, Gethen, humans are without gender. That is, they only have a gender during a few days out of the month, when they become sexually active. During these things, they could go either way -- one month male, another month female, it just depends on who's around. The main character is an envoy to this planet from an interplanetary alliance, and he is their first contact with the outside universe. Male. All the time male. So, during the first half of the book, or so, there's a lot of palaver over what they're going to do with him, and he drifts around making little progress as a diplomat, finding out more about the planet. Nothing terribly urgent happens.



This summer, I'm trying to finish some books that I'd given up on. You may recognize some of these sentiments from the last review. So, I picked up the book and read a few more pages of politlcal this and that. THEN the second half of the book happened, and it all became magically clear, why everyone raves about the book, and loves it, and considers it so revelatory, so sublime. The envoy suddenly experiences everything you want characters in novels to experience -- danger, love, and a challenge to his intellect -- bang, bang, bang, right on through to the end. Now all the imagery makes sense. Now all the exposition pays off. It's all struck into bright definition, like a chalk drawing that's been fadoodled over with light grey strokes for hours and then instantly becomes a dragon with three bold lines of a darker shade.

Did she have to go through all that, to get to this place? Maybe she did. Obviously it worked. And for those weak souls like me who have to flog themselves through the first half, where everything seems cold and dry, and nothing seems to be moving, take heart, keep flogging, and get some sleep too, because once you get on the truck headed north, you're going to have trouble putting the book down.

Labels: books, left hand of darkness, scifi, ursula k. le guin

I didn't know about this book but found it on a friend's bookshelf and was surprised I'd never heard of it. It is a dystopian sci-fi novel, set in the future, but written by a Russian in 1920, before Lenin died, before Stalin rose to power. It was instantly banned by the Soviets, as it is an agonizing criticism of the idea of collective identity. In the book, the people have numbers, and nature has been shut outside the city, and all walls and floors are glass, and everyone lives by a "Table of Hours" which prescribes the activities for the day.

There are plenty of plot-summarizing reviews of the book around. Also, check out the author's portrait, by Boris Kustoviev via Wikipedia. It looks like someone photoshopped his head onto an old drawing. Odd.

The book has as its obvious shelfmates Anthem by Ayn Rand and 1984 by George Orwell, but it is more lyrical, more hysterical, more stream-of-consciousness. I suppose Orwell's prose is stronger and Rand is certainly more direct, but I actually loved its dreamy and confusing style, and didn't mind not knowing what the hell was going on a lot of the time. It seemed more true that a journal entry from this future world, with its strange premises and priorities, would read as confusing and boggling to me. Sometimes I didn't know which end was up, and it almost felt like the narrator was writing blind. I think that was intentional and masterful. One of the best and most convincing aspects of the book was that the narrator didn't always seem in control.

This book begins with the narrator not only a willing part of this world without individuals, but an enthusiastic supporter of these ideas. He isn't grimy and hopeless about it all (ahem, Winston Smith?); he's a cheerleader for the system. Of course, it all goes terribly awry.

It occurred to me as I was comparing those three books that the oppressive, dystopian system never seems to break down for these people because of acquisition of material wealth. It doesn't break down because they don't like being told what pants to wear either. These characters, denied property, denied privacy, denied choice, do not rebel to get their own TV or to get their own bank account or their own window shades. They rebel to get their own girl. It's always love that breaks the system down, that sends the main character tangentially off, destroying himself to be alone with the woman he loves. Interesting. I wonder if that is really true. Maybe it just makes good books, to say that people will give up fortunes but not give up a mate. We'd have a harder time cheering for the grey little cog in the machine, who breaks out of his place so he can triumphantly and emotionally buy a Corvette. Love makes a good novel. But is that really how it would work? The characters in We are allowed to bed whoever they want -- they just have to register and receive a "pink coupon" to make it happen. Would people really bring the world down around their ears just to reinstate monogamy?

books yevgeny+zamyatin dystopian+fiction russia

Labels: books, novels, scifi, yegeny zamyatin